"Me." "Ah." Sir William rubbed his chin in bewilderment; then he added, humorously, "_Miss_ Me? Right, so far?" "You have a short memory," commented the voice on the phone. "You have chanced," said Ware, pleasantly, "upon a melancholy fact, madam. But may I not ask the identity of--Jove! wait a bit, though! My creaking wheels of recollection are beginning to revolve.... I have it! I have it! Miss Nixon?" "Yes," said Daisy's voice, in a matter-of-fact way, "it is. I want to see you." Sir William, at the speaker's naive directness, covered the transmitter with his palm and rocked in enjoyment. "Bravo!" he said, then, uncovering the instrument; "the city hasn't spoiled you yet, my dear--has it?" "I'm waiting near that cafe we were at before," said Daisy, "how long will you be?" Something in the bare blunt words made Sir William hug himself in an almost boyish ecstasy. "I shall come," he answered, "on the wings of Hermes. They should bring me into your presence in from three to five minutes, young lady." Daisy Nixon, after hanging up the telephone in the little candy store across from the Cumberland Cafe, had waited barely four minutes in the shadowed street just beyond the circle of light from the Cumberland's windows, when she saw a tall figure, cane in hand, walk briskly into that area of illumination. She crossed the street. Ware, dangling his cane and glancing about enquiringly, saw her when she was half-way across the circle of light and facing the full blaze of it. Her bright frank eyes; her clear girlish fresh cheeks, on which a certain nervousness kept the tide of color changing its shape and margin; her round maidenly lines of bust and hip and ankle: all wrought curiously and strongly and with a united effect upon Ware, as they had on that night in the Harrison dining-room when his attention, drawn to her casually by the accident to the soup-tureen, had changed at once to the heartiest interest. Material absolutely fresh and new! Molten and virgin gold, not yet resistable to the stamp of the die! "Well," he said, stepping forward hospitably, "how are you, my dear? Shall we go in?" "Yes." Daisy stepped inside, deliberately unpinned and hung up her hat, and sat down opposite to the baronet at the table he had chosen along the side of the room. It was the same table they had occupied on their previous visit. "Don't order much," she said; "I'm not hungry. I came here to talk." "I think," said Sir William, "that talking will be much more enjoyable. I dined late, myself. Suppose we have, say, a few grapes and a little something to drink--an iced drink of some sort." "Anything you like," said Daisy. She laid her hands on the table, caught her lower lip under her teeth with a shy gesture that was delicious to Ware, and said--quite plainly, and without yielding to that impulse of coquetry which had made him so brief with her on their previous meeting--"Were you in earnest, that time you asked me to marry you?"